We were picking up toys in the living room, and the radio switched to Robin Thicke’s song “blurred lines.” After a minute I walked over and changed the station, MS Action stopped her be-bopping and asked “Why’d you turn off that song mom? It’s good for dancing.”I thought about it, “It is a good beat for dancing isn’t it, I just don’t really like the words in that song.”“Oh, why don’t you like the words mom?” My 7 year old persisted.“Well, he sings about doing stuff to people that they don’t want him to do, and… he thinks it’s OK.” I tried to explain.“That’s not OK!” piped up 5 year old MS Drama.” “You shouldn’t do things to people that they don’t want you to do."“Definite … [Read more...]

So Jessa Duggar is officially courting and seeing the headlines on news sites and the links people were sharing made me feel nauseous. Reading the articles where they are portrayed as a young couple making a quaint and cute (albeit different) choice when it comes to romance. And then reading the comments where clueless person after clueless person gushes admiration for the “values” and praises them for being “role models.” My heart rate goes up. I close my laptop. I try not to think about it, but still end up feeling vaguely sad. Because I know the rest of the story, I lived it.I know the stuff that the news articles and the commenters don’t know. How a girl in this movement is told thro … [Read more...]

So it's been over two months since my last post, and I hope to write about what has been going on lately soon. In the meantime, I have dipped my toes back into the writing world by writing a piece for Homeschoolers Anonymous.They are having a homeschooled LGBTQ week, so be sure to check out the stories of other people who grew up homeschooled and queer, or grew up opposing gay rights and later became allies. If you read the posts prior to this week, Homeschoolers Anonymous is giving a voice to people who grew up homeschooled and have something to say about it. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, others are inspiring, but all need to be told, and all need to be heard.Here … [Read more...]

There is a Christian arguement against being gay that claims it is "unnatural". You know, Men and Women belong together. Heterosexuality is the normal natural way to be. Tab A fits perfectly into Slot B and all that. The argument is that most people are straight, gay people are just a small percentage of people who have fallen into unnatural desires.Conservative Catholics in particular love this “natural law” argument, because they feel that it is non-religious in nature, and therefore in their mind applies to everyone. And yet, growing up as a conservative Christian, I was told to be different, part of a peculiar people, to stand out from the crowd and avoid the majority cultur … [Read more...]

Some months back Haley and I watched the popular movie “The Help”. Throughout the movie (which focuses on the role of black women in the southern united states in the 1960's) There is this ongoing discussion about people of color using the same bathrooms as people with white skin. People talk about being well-to-do enough to build a separate bathroom for the negro help, there is talk of how “black people have diseases” that white people don’t want to contract, and there is even a scene where a black maid locks herself in the bathroom while her white boss screams outside the door in a panic over her bathroom being used by a colored person.It is stunning how backwards this mentality was. I … [Read more...]

This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.Even though we had hoped that it would be enough for my spouse to simply be more authentic to his feminine self, it seemed that the idea of transition was coming up more and more. My spouse talked about how frustrating it was to have this battle raging in his head every single day, his brain telling him again and again that he was really a woman. He told me how the idea of becoming an old man terrified him. It was bad enough being trapped in the body of a young man, but to be old and helpless and cared for by people who would treat him as a guy was dreadful to him. Sometimes he cried, all of … [Read more...]